[MD] A fine mess

[skutvik at online.no]

Ian
 
Wed. Dec 3. you wrote: 

> OK, so Bo, no place to hide ;-)
> Picking up on that schizophrenia (agreeing and denying in the same
> "apparent" logic).

We have been at these frightening heights for years and are close to 
suffocating, inhaling and exhaling - agreeing and denying - in the same 
breath.
 
> (And leaving aside any personal name calling "the intellectuals", "the
> menagerie", "the new-agers" .... we're all at it one way or another if 
> we're being honest ... it's called heated debate, it's rhetoric, it's what
> "interested" people do. So ...)

 Right!

> Please therefore address the considered response to you on that
> logical bind that leads to the schizophrenia.
> (Reposted below, since you seem to have missed it.)
 
                  -----------------------------------------.


> > We get to the real root of the problem Bo. We use the term SOMist
> > about the focus on subjects and objects (yawn), but in fact a problem is
> > indeed in our adherence to "logic" when we use these objects. (NB "logic
> > when we use ...", not logic per se.) So. 
 
> > You are right I do do "violence" to certain kinds of "SOMist logic" as I
> > have freely admitted. The argument is not simply logic vs faith as you
> > would have it, but belief in different kinds of logic. You are just as
> > wedded to your view of logic as you think I am to some other mysterious
> > kind of logic. Because the latter is mysterious to you and the former
> > isn't, you call the one logic and the other faith. But, listen ... I
> > really am an engineer / scientist / manager - I'm no mysterian ...

  
I read your post in its time, however you have a gift for becoming ... (fill 
in) and your juggling with the different kind of logics baffled me. I think 
logic is universal but the premises determines the outcome of 
whatever medium's wandering through the logical gates. Had "Symbol 
Logic" been universal things would have been easy. IMO the 
metaphysics in the (no one can avoid... ) sense deliver the premises. 

Mysticism from a religious p.o.v. is contact with God and we know 
Pirsig equals it with dynamic experience and this may be his Zen 
leaning because Eastern religion/tradition is supposed to be mystical. 
But dynamics is no no place to stay and Pirsig made it back (just) and 
wrote a metaphysics that has the Dynamic/Static dichotomy as its 
premises. Not as he has it, that he could have constructed any sort of 
dichotomy and it would still be a MOQ.               

> In my kind of (dependent-arising / circular / recursive /
> strange-loopy) logic, which is "mysterious" to you (ie not logic), the
> basic tenets of your kind of syllogistic logic are not violated, it's just
> that they have to be applied to the right levels of things (I hesitate to
> say "objects"). So there is a reductionism required, a "non-greedy" kind
> of reductionism, to explain all the processes (quite logically) in the
> physical levels but that explanations at one level are not simply "causes"
> in another. They are part of interactive two-way-causal processes, not
> one-way causations - closer to quality in fact, or inclusionality. The
> things we see as (as if) causes and effects in the macro
> (non-reductionist) world are not governed by simple logic in that world.
> The loops of interactivity cross levels, and we get "emergence" or
> "dependent arisings".

Here you climb even higher and I have trouble following your. I have 
the same trouble with your presentation at the Liverpool conference (I 
have the video) but you are a sympathetic fellow ;-)  

> When I talk about being "pragmatic" I am certainly not taking us back
> to some time before the objects of science were available for logicald 
> analysis. I'm just saying that in the macro, everyday world, the one
> in which we need to make day to day decisions, we should not be
> surprised to find breakdowns in simple logical relationships between
> objects at this macro level. Probability based on experience needs to
> plug such holes in strict logic (at this level). Avoid analysis
> paralysis, and live. It's a "radical" kind of pragmatism, but a
> post-MoQ enlightened kind, not an ignorant kind. In fact, it's wisdom
> for want of a better word.

I take this to mean that on the practical plane the distinction between 
things (in the most ordinary sense) and ourselves is valid, but this 
takes us back to times immemorial so it's not your idea. Well, our 
natural static home is the intellectual level where the S/O - as reason - 
rules*) this is what I mean by "pragmatism", namely that we may go 
about intellect's business - as scientists even, as particle physicist 
even - from the premises that its S/O distinction isn't absolute, that no 
elementary particle will be found. This goes for all S/O offsprings and 
the scientific disciplines based on those.      

*)  Other cultures may have the social level their abode, it has nothing 
to do with being clever, smart or intelligent. 

> The sophists, rhetoricians and poets (and sages) actually get closer
> to communicating this than I have, but enlightened science really is
> converging on the same picture, without giving up it's logical tenets,
> just its unfounded certainty in tangible objects in any given level, to
> which it erroneously applies that logic all too easily.

There has been many of the mentioned categories who have 
encountered the mystical, dynamical aspect of existence, but only the 
MOQ has made it into a coherent metaphysics. 

As always in my opinion.

Bo